Malawi Congress Party (MCP) president Dr Lazarus Chakwera who is also leader of opposition in Parliament, on Thursday said he feels there is a political motive over the way how Lilongwe City Council is pushing alleged K265 million city rates which the council claims MCP owes them.

Chakwera addressing a news conference at MCP headquarters

Chakwera was addressing a news conference at the party headquarters in Lilongwe and said it is surprising that up to now the party has not received summons over the same.

“We are just hearing from the media the council officials have not come to us over the same,” said Chakwera.

Chakwera said MCP the legal team led by its party secretary general Gustav Kaliwo is working on the matter.

“As a party we are not worried and the truth will be known,” said Chakwera.

Chakwera stressed MCP could not lose the building due to such a little anomaly and asked its supporters must remain calm.

The opposition leader also attacked the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on governance and condemned its Secretary General Ecklen Kudontoni who during a meeting he addressed in Mzuzu had called on CEOs of statutory corporations to support the DPP.

“I condemned in very strong terms those unfortunate remarks and called for a retraction of such undemocratic statements. I asked the DPP leadership to censure the official unless the statements reflected the thinking of the leadership of the party at the highest level,” said Chakwera.

“In typical fashion of the DPP instead of retracting the remarks or censoring the Secretary General, a claim is now being made that the Secretary General was misunderstood or misquoted. It is most unfortunate, in my view, that the blame is now being placed on the media.

“I repeat my demand that there must be an unequivocal retraction of those unfortunate statements. If the DPP insists that the Secretary General was misunderstood then I demand that the DPP must make available to Malawians the complete recording or full transcript of what the Secretary General said so that all Malawians can hear for themselves what the Secretary General said and judge for themselves if what was said is proper,” continued Chakwera.

But President Peter Mutharika on Wednesday disassociated himself from remarks made by Kudontoni.

Mutharika has asked government officials and DPP members to refrain from making comments that mischaracterise the views of the Head of State and the beliefs of the DPP with regard to how Malawi must move forward.

The presidency assured that the policy of the Mutharika administration to separate between functions of State and partisan politics has not changed.

But Chakwera said the statement issued by the President “falls short of condemning the official, it would have been even better to be told that the individual was summoned and censured instead of just generalizing.”

Chancellor College associate professor of political science Blessings Chinsinga said civil servants should not be victimised for not supporting DPP.

The question which the MCP president should answer are; Does your party pay city rates? Is paying city rates a political issue? Are you suggesting that all of us should stop paying city rates as long as we can hire a lawyer?

There is indeed an invisible DPP force behind all this issue. Why is the City being hash on MCP only when most residents at Area 25 sector 3,4,5,6,7,8, Area 23, 43 and 44 have huge arrears including the City officials who have Cash gate like mansions but they are paying no city rates.

I know that MCP is very accountable on everything they will pay the bills. It was an oversight as they were busy with campaign to be in government. Now they will concentrate on the paying back the bills. We lost the donor support and with these huge sums can support our national budget.

How about the bills from the properties in other cities and towns? Please reconcile properly and pay.